Current affairs

After their very real election losses -- President, Senate seats, House seats -- you'd think reality-denying Republicans (who imagined Romney would be victorious despite all the polling evidence to the contrary) would have learned that facts matter. But, nope. They're up to their old tricks, hoping that a lie told over and over on Fox News and elsewhere somehow will transform into truth.  The current Lie of the Moment is that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who is being talked about as a replacement for Secretary of State Clinton, deceived Americans when she described the Benghazi attacks soon after they happened.…

"Majority rules." Makes sense to me. I can live with that. In both the House and the Senate. Do away with the Senate's stupid filibuster custom where 41 out of 100 Senators have veto power over what legislation will be passed by Congress, and whether Presidential nominations of administration officials and judges will be confirmed. Republican abuse of the filibuster has led to Senate gridlock. Then Republicans complain that the Obama administration can't get anything through the Senate. This hypocritical insanity has to end. There's a lot to like about a parliamentary system of government. An election is held. A…

Even though I have not yet attained to my complete 100% Buddha Nature, I'm compassionate enough (just barely, but enough) to reach out to almost half of American voters and say, echoing my idol Bill Clinton:  I feel your pain. Not as much as you do, because you're you and I'm me. But I know how badly I would be feeling at the moment if Mitt Romney had been elected president last Tuesday instead of Barack Obama.So I can easily empathize with the disappointment of those who were intensely looking forward to Romney winning. I was nervous myself for several…

Disappointingly, yesterday Oregonians voted down Measure 80, which would have decriminalized marijuana and allowed its sale in state-sponsored stores. But Washington and Colorado approved their own marijuana legalization measures. Kudos to the Portland Oregonian editorial board for recognizing that marijuana tourism across the Columbia river from this state is going to enlarge Washington's government revenues.  In an online editorial published today, which likely will be in the print paper tomorrow, the editorial board said "Oregon lawmakers should take up marijuana legalization." Yes, the failure of Oregon's marijuana legalization measure Tuesday must have disappointed its sponsors and supporters. But how sad can they…

Yesterday Nate Silver, superstar data-based Five Thirty Eight political analyst, shared an enigmatic tweet: "This election is an epistemological watershed." I loved it. Even though I really didn't know for sure what Silver was talking about. I felt like I did, though.  Thus my divided reaction to the words "this election is an epistemological watershed" seems to reflect why the 2012 election here in the United States is so important. Knowledge vs. feeling. Facts vs. fantasy. Science vs. religion.  A watershed is marked by a divide. The choice between Romney and Obama, along with the choice between Republicans and Democrats generally, indeed…

Ah, I so like plain talk in politics. Lie is a wonderful word that usually gets disguised by "falsehood," "untruth," or some other polite term that may be appropriate for mild lies, but are too weak for whopper lies. Like Mitt Romney's claim that Chrysler and Obama are working together to ship American jobs to China, since Jeeps supposedly will be made there instead of the United States. That's a lie. The Romney campaign must have known this. Or they could have learned the truth with a short phone call to Chrysler headquarters. But liars like to lie, and Romney…

Three weeks ago, October 4 to be exact, I was feeling pretty damn good about the presidential election. Eighty-seven percent good, to be exact. Back then this was the chance Nate Silver of highly respected Five Thirty Eight was giving an Obama win. Wow!, I thought; 87% is close to 90%, which is so close to 100% I figured Romney should just concede now, rather than waiting for the inevitable. Unfortunately for progressives like me, Romney showed up at the first debate and Obama didn't. At least, not as the Obama we saw in the second and third debates.  So…

I'm feeling good about the presidential election. Let's have it tomorrow, not in two weeks. Obama whipped Romney's ass tonight, just like he did in the second debate.  Don't believe me. Believe the snap polls.  CBS: Obama won - 53%  Romney won - 23%PPP: Obama won - 53%  Romney won - 42%CNN: Obama won - 48%  Romney won - 40% The CBS poll was of undecided voters, so that's great news for Obama. Wow, he beat Romney by more than two to one among those who may tilt the election one way or the other. Not surprising. Romney looked lip-smackingly…

Yeah, it's a fantasy, but I can dream about Romney apologizing to Obama at Monday night's debate. "I'm sorry, Mr. President, for asserting that you and your administration misled the American people about what happened in Benghazi right after the attack on our consulate. Now information has come out that supports the initial analysis of the situation." This assumes that Romney reads the Los Angeles Times, and saw its recent "No evidence found of Al Qaeda role in Libya attack" story.  Excerpts: The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than…

Love it. Love it! Love it!! Congrats to the Obama speechwriter(s) who came up with the inspired notion of "Romnesia." That's a perfect one word description of what Mitt Romney suffers from. And which we voters can't allow to have spread to the rest of America. Best line is when Obama tells Romney, no need to worry about your illness, you've got Obamacare, and it covers pre-existing conditions! The video is well worth 4:43 of your time. I smiled my way through it.    Thanks to Daily Kos for a Romnesia blog post.---------------------------------"We've got to name this condition that he's…

Usually I watch the recorded first third of KGW's Portland 11 pm news in a semi-comatose state, aware of what's on the TV only enough to keep fast-forwarding through the seemingly endless string of car crashes, dog bites, and other "if it bleeds, it leads" stories that bore my wife and I. But last night -- gasp! -- KGW actually mentioned some national political news early on. Unfortunately, they got it wrong. Though I can't remember anchor Laural Porter's exact words, the gist of what she said was, "Polls split on who won the second presidential debate, Obama or Romney."…

President Obama and I have made up. Evidence is shown in our VISA balance, which became $100 larger a few minutes ago. I'd vowed "no more Obama for America" donations -- especially after the first presidential debate, when, after a brief honeymoon period during which I thought Obama did fine, the horror of his listless performance hit home. After watching tonight's debate, though, I'm a happy progressive again. Win or lose (and I'm betting "win"), Obama has gotten back to being a tough fighter. That's all I wanted: to see him go toe to toe with Romney rather than cower…

This blog post almost was going to be about Joe Biden's strong debate performance last night, where he smiled, smirked, and that's malarky'd in a "give 'em hell" manner that raised my progressive spirits.  I was all set to discuss some analyses of Paul Ryan's dissembling, a.k.a. lying, the most obvious of which was his resolute reluctance to provide any details at all about the Romney-Ryan plan to cut tax rates 20% across the board without increasing the deficit or the middle class tax burden. This magic is supposed to happen by limiting certain deductions and other tax expenditures. Bizarrely,…

Thanks to a fellow Tai Chi student who didn't take Obama's groan-inducing performance (if you're a progressive) at the first 2012 presidential debate as seriously as I did, today I learned about a Taiwanese animation that takes a humorous view of the Romney-Obama bout. Have a look. And a read of the subtitles, unless your Chinese is a lot better than mine.   It was healing to smile my way out of the pain I've been feeling as, day by day, Obama's re-election chances take another downward tilt on Five Thirty Eight. He's down to 68%, a big drop from the…

Oh, great. Not! Just what I didn't want to read at the end of an otherwise splendid sunny warm rainless Oregon day. Nate Silver's overview of where the presidential race stands. Following another day of strong polling on Tuesday, Mitt Romney advanced into the best position in the FiveThirtyEight forecast since the party conventions.  ...The forecast model is not quite ready to jump on board with the notion that the race has become a literal toss-up; Mr. Romney will need to maintain his bounce for a few more days, or extend it into high-quality polls of swing states, before we…

On the slight chance that this blog rant will be read by a social media Democratic campaign fundraiser, here's some tips for you from a progressive who is getting irritated at your current tactics. My wife and I already have given quite a bit of money to Obama for America, the Congressional Democratic campaign committees, and some individual candidates like Elizabeth Warren. Plus, we've donated in support of Oregon Dems. We're more inclined to give when we feel that campaigns are doing the best they can, with energy and enthusiasm, to defeat Republican efforts to return us to the not-good-old…

After I finished watching a recording of the first Obama-Romney debate last night, I said to my wife (who saw it live at a friend's house), "I think Obama did fine." Then I watched the MSNBC commentary. Almost universally the liberal commentators, along with the conservative ones, said Obama's debate performance was a disaster. After listening to them for a while, I started to change my mind about how well he did. But with the light of a new day, and further pondering of what went on during the debate, I'm back to feeling good about Obama. Yes, he wasn't…